Rita Barnard
Biographic Data
| ID | 3625223 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rita Barnard |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rita |
| FAMILY NAME | Barnard |
| SIGNATURE | BARNARD R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Pennsylvania |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 29 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 32 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Otelo Burning
This article examines questions of revolution and revolutionary desire in the post-apartheid film, Otelo Burning (2011). The trope that underlies the form of the film is anagnorisis, which demands a process of re-evaluation of the past in the light of recently acquired information. The past is South Africa of the 1980s, and the more recent experience is that of the African National Congress’s betrayal of its promise to rule “by the people, for th…
Introduction
In his introduction to Barack Obama’s 2018 Nelson Mandela Lecture in Johannesburg, the South African writer Njabulo Ndebele commented on the dire political situation on both sides of the Atlantic
South African Writing in Transition
Bringing together leading and emerging scholars, this book asks the question: how has contemporary South African literature grappled with ideas of time and history during the political transition away from apartheid? Reading the work of major South African writers such as J.M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer and Ivan Vladislavic as well as contemporary crime and science fiction, South African Writing in Transition explores how concerns about time and te…
Nelson Mandela. The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela
In our age of instant communication, personal vituperation passing as political rhetoric, and disregard for the rule of law, The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela offers much food for thought. Indeed, Mandela’s prison letters are instructive and uplifting, despite the many moments of heartbreak and frustration they record. One letter in particular, from the middle of this sizable volume, strikes me as particularly arresting today. It is a long and…
The Keeper of Metamorphosis
The Cambridge Companion to Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela was one of the most revered figures of our time. He committed himself to a compelling political cause, suffered a long prison sentence, and led his violent and divided country to a peaceful democratic transition. His legacy, however, is not uncontested: his decision to embark on an armed struggle in the 1960s, his solitary talks with apartheid officials in the 1980s, and the economic policies adopted during his presidency still spa…
Tributes to Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)
A Tribute to Andrew Offenburger, Founding Editor of Safundi
On Public and Private in J. M. Coetzee
This essay reads J. M. Coetzee's Diary of a Bad Year in its historical context (the moment of the US war in Iraq, Abu Graib, Guantanamo and the apparent triumph of neoliberalism), while also probing the problems at stake in the practice of contextual reading and of taking the work as staging the opinions of the biographical Coetzee. The essay teases out not only the question of whether Coetzee should be seen as a public intellectual (the short bu…
Print, Text and Book Cultures in South Africa
Vir iemand wat altyd die gewig van 'n boek takseer terwyl jy begin blaai en nie die verleiding kan weerstaan om aan die binnekant te ruik nie, is Print, Text and Book Cultures in South Africa 'n heerlike boek. Nie dat dit spesifiek lekkerder as ander moderne boeke ruik nie - wel kraakhelder en fris - maar omdat die materialiteit, die boek as ding, so sterk op die voorgrond staan in die 21 artikels waaruit dit bestaan. Die plesier begin al danksy …
Ugly Feelings, Negative Dialectics
Beyond Rivalry
At the Cape Town Book Fair in 1987, during the height of the anti‐apartheid struggle, J. M. Coetzee made one of his most provocative speeches. It is one that is frequently cited by the proliferatin
Post-Apartheid Modernism and Consumer Culture
In this essay, I wish to extend the terrain of modernist studies and offer a new, perhaps troubling, way of viewing post-apartheid South African literature and culture. After some critical and theoretical ground clearing in the first two sections, I propose to read two contemporary novels in order to test my sense that their shared preoccupations are best grasped if we view them under the rubric of ‘post-apartheid modernism’. I bear in mind, neve…
Coetzee in/and Afrikaans
This article investigates Coetzee's complex attitudes towards the Afrikaans language, and, by extension, his views on language, translation, and the potential and performative subject positions, or “fictions of the”–enacted in and determined by a given language. It reflects on relevant passages from Coetzee's criticism (including “Achterberg's ‘Ballade van de Gasfitter’”, “Emerging from Censorship”, “What is a Classic?”, and “He and His Man”) and…
Fictions of the Global
If, as Benedict Anderson has argued, the realist novel has a particularly close relationship to the nation, what kind of narrative form would be best suited to transnational or even global fictions? This essay proposes a few answers to this question by looking first at what Roger Ebert has called “hyperlink cinema,” a form that emerging directors like Alexandro Gonzáles Iñárritu have used to connect narratives set in widely disparate locations (t…
Tsotsis
Tsotsis:On Law, the Outlaw, and the Postcolonial State Rita Barnard (bio) Awuyodubula, awuyopansula, awuyokhuthuza, uyodlwengula . . .Ha, dubula mbayimbayi! Ma libhubha liyabhubha . . .Namhlanj 'uthint'ezidl'inhlok'uthint'uBhambathaAwu, Tsots'usuze kaBhambatha namhlanjeUthini? Hhe, awufun'ukuza ngala?Awu, klev'usuze kaBhambatha namhlanje! Zola, "Bhambatha" (from the Tsotsi sound track) It is hardly in our power to change the form of the state and…
Apartheid and Beyond
This book contributes to the study of South African literature, offering readings of writers such as Coetzee, Gordimer, Fugard, Tlali, and Mda. Focusing on the relationship between place, subjectivity, and literary form, the study examines our understanding of apartheid as a geographical form of control, and of its imagined and actual transformation
Oprah's Paton, or south Africa and the Globalization of Suffering
This article emerges from the author's work for Oprah.com: the website of Harpo Inc., Oprah Winfrey's vast multinational media corporation. From December 2003 to January 2004, Barnard served as the official “literary guide” to members of Oprah's Book Club as they made their way through Alan Paton's novel Cry, the Beloved Country. The essay meditates on this most recent chapter in this “hypercanonical” book's transnational reception. Barnard agrue…
An Introduction to Issue 23
This introduction summarizes the collective concerns of the essays in this volume and suggests that they are ultimately best captured in the notion of “deterritorialization”: a consideration of cultural products as they are exported or interpretively wrested away from their geographic origins and from their “natural” context in any sort of unilinear national narrative. It also describes the origins of this issue. The initial idea was create a cou…
The Cambridge Companion to American Modernism
The Cambridge Companion to American Modernism provides a comprehensive and authoritative overview of American literary modernism from 1890 to 1939. These original essays by twelve distinguished scholars of international reputation offer critical overviews of the major genres, literary culture, and social contexts that define the current state of Modern American literature and cultural studies. Among the diverse topics covered are nationalism, rac…
Bitterkomix
Research Article| October 01 2004 Bitterkomix: Notes from the Post-Apartheid Underground Rita Barnard Rita Barnard Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google South Atlantic Quarterly (2004) 103 (4): 719–754. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-103-4-719 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Permissions Search Site Citation Rita Barnard; Bitterkomix: Notes from the Post-Apartheid Underground. South Atlantic Q…
Coetzee's Country Ways
This essay examines Disgrace in the light of Coetzee's critical intervention in and contribution to the tradition of the South African pastoral. The discussion focuses on two intertextual conversations: first, between Disgrace and Life & Times of Michael K and, second, between Disgrace and Charles van Onselen's oral history, The Seed is Mine . The essay reflects on the novel's lexicon (the meaning of basic words like 'friend', 'neighbour', and th…
Speaking Places
Ernest Renan's definition of the essence of a nation?that all indi? viduals must have a lot in common and also that they must all have forgotten a great deal?has perhaps never seemed so apt as it does in the case of postapartheid South Africa (Bhabha 11). Indeed, the history of that country's transition to democracy has at times been so stirring that one could be forgiven for applying Renan's observation in the positive way he intended?without th…
Writing South Africa
During the final years of the apartheid era and the subsequent transition to democracy, South African literary writing caught the world's attention as never before. Writers responded to the changing political situation and its daily impact on the country's inhabitants with works that recorded or satirised state-enforced racism, explored the possibilities of resistance and rebuilding, and creatively addressed the vexed question of literature's rel…
Another Country
Postmodern Culture - Volume 9, Number 1, September 1998
Tsotsis
Tsotsis:On Law, the Outlaw, and the Postcolonial State Rita Barnard (bio) Awuyodubula, awuyopansula, awuyokhuthuza, uyodlwengula . . .Ha, dubula mbayimbayi! Ma libhubha liyabhubha . . .Namhlanj 'uthint'ezidl'inhlok'uthint'uBhambathaAwu, Tsots'usuze kaBhambatha namhlanjeUthini? Hhe, awufun'ukuza ngala?Awu, klev'usuze kaBhambatha namhlanje! Zola, "Bhambatha" (from the Tsotsi sound track) It is hardly in our power to change the form of the state and…
Fictions of the Global
If, as Benedict Anderson has argued, the realist novel has a particularly close relationship to the nation, what kind of narrative form would be best suited to transnational or even global fictions? This essay proposes a few answers to this question by looking first at what Roger Ebert has called “hyperlink cinema,” a form that emerging directors like Alexandro Gonzáles Iñárritu have used to connect narratives set in widely disparate locations (t…
Oprah's Paton, or south Africa and the Globalization of Suffering
This article emerges from the author's work for Oprah.com: the website of Harpo Inc., Oprah Winfrey's vast multinational media corporation. From December 2003 to January 2004, Barnard served as the official “literary guide” to members of Oprah's Book Club as they made their way through Alan Paton's novel Cry, the Beloved Country. The essay meditates on this most recent chapter in this “hypercanonical” book's transnational reception. Barnard agrue…
Bitterkomix
Research Article| October 01 2004 Bitterkomix: Notes from the Post-Apartheid Underground Rita Barnard Rita Barnard Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google South Atlantic Quarterly (2004) 103 (4): 719–754. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-103-4-719 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Permissions Search Site Citation Rita Barnard; Bitterkomix: Notes from the Post-Apartheid Underground. South Atlantic Q…
Coetzee's Country Ways
This essay examines Disgrace in the light of Coetzee's critical intervention in and contribution to the tradition of the South African pastoral. The discussion focuses on two intertextual conversations: first, between Disgrace and Life & Times of Michael K and, second, between Disgrace and Charles van Onselen's oral history, The Seed is Mine . The essay reflects on the novel's lexicon (the meaning of basic words like 'friend', 'neighbour', and th…
The Keeper of Metamorphosis
Dream Topographies
Research Article| January 01 1994 Dream Topographies: J. M. Coetzee and the South African Pastoral Rita Barnard Rita Barnard Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google South Atlantic Quarterly (1994) 93 (1): 33–58. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-93-1-33 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Rita Barnard; Dream Topographies: J. M. Coetzee and the South African Pastoral. …
Imagining The Unimaginable
‘Imagining The Unimaginable’: J.M. Coetzee, History, and Autobiography Rita Barnard Attwell, David. J.M. Coetzee: South Africa and the Politics of Writing. Perspectives on South Africa 48. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993. Coetzee, J.M. Doubling the Point: Essays and Interviews. Ed. David Attwell. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992. David Attwell’s important new critical account of J.M. Coetzee’s work takes as…
Dream Topographies
Research Article| January 01 1994 Dream Topographies: J. M. Coetzee and the South African Pastoral Rita Barnard Rita Barnard Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google South Atlantic Quarterly (1994) 93 (1): 33–58. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-93-1-33 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Rita Barnard; Dream Topographies: J. M. Coetzee and the South African Pastoral. …
When You Wish Upon a Star
The Great Depression and the Culture of Abundance
Writing South Africa
During the final years of the apartheid era and the subsequent transition to democracy, South African literary writing caught the world's attention as never before. Writers responded to the changing political situation and its daily impact on the country's inhabitants with works that recorded or satirised state-enforced racism, explored the possibilities of resistance and rebuilding, and creatively addressed the vexed question of literature's rel…
Another Country
Postmodern Culture - Volume 9, Number 1, September 1998
Speaking Places
Ernest Renan's definition of the essence of a nation?that all indi? viduals must have a lot in common and also that they must all have forgotten a great deal?has perhaps never seemed so apt as it does in the case of postapartheid South Africa (Bhabha 11). Indeed, the history of that country's transition to democracy has at times been so stirring that one could be forgiven for applying Renan's observation in the positive way he intended?without th…
Coetzee's Country Ways
This essay examines Disgrace in the light of Coetzee's critical intervention in and contribution to the tradition of the South African pastoral. The discussion focuses on two intertextual conversations: first, between Disgrace and Life & Times of Michael K and, second, between Disgrace and Charles van Onselen's oral history, The Seed is Mine . The essay reflects on the novel's lexicon (the meaning of basic words like 'friend', 'neighbour', and th…
Bitterkomix
Research Article| October 01 2004 Bitterkomix: Notes from the Post-Apartheid Underground Rita Barnard Rita Barnard Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google South Atlantic Quarterly (2004) 103 (4): 719–754. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-103-4-719 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Permissions Search Site Citation Rita Barnard; Bitterkomix: Notes from the Post-Apartheid Underground. South Atlantic Q…
The Cambridge Companion to American Modernism
The Cambridge Companion to American Modernism provides a comprehensive and authoritative overview of American literary modernism from 1890 to 1939. These original essays by twelve distinguished scholars of international reputation offer critical overviews of the major genres, literary culture, and social contexts that define the current state of Modern American literature and cultural studies. Among the diverse topics covered are nationalism, rac…
Apartheid and Beyond
This book contributes to the study of South African literature, offering readings of writers such as Coetzee, Gordimer, Fugard, Tlali, and Mda. Focusing on the relationship between place, subjectivity, and literary form, the study examines our understanding of apartheid as a geographical form of control, and of its imagined and actual transformation
Oprah's Paton, or south Africa and the Globalization of Suffering
This article emerges from the author's work for Oprah.com: the website of Harpo Inc., Oprah Winfrey's vast multinational media corporation. From December 2003 to January 2004, Barnard served as the official “literary guide” to members of Oprah's Book Club as they made their way through Alan Paton's novel Cry, the Beloved Country. The essay meditates on this most recent chapter in this “hypercanonical” book's transnational reception. Barnard agrue…
An Introduction to Issue 23
This introduction summarizes the collective concerns of the essays in this volume and suggests that they are ultimately best captured in the notion of “deterritorialization”: a consideration of cultural products as they are exported or interpretively wrested away from their geographic origins and from their “natural” context in any sort of unilinear national narrative. It also describes the origins of this issue. The initial idea was create a cou…
Tsotsis
Tsotsis:On Law, the Outlaw, and the Postcolonial State Rita Barnard (bio) Awuyodubula, awuyopansula, awuyokhuthuza, uyodlwengula . . .Ha, dubula mbayimbayi! Ma libhubha liyabhubha . . .Namhlanj 'uthint'ezidl'inhlok'uthint'uBhambathaAwu, Tsots'usuze kaBhambatha namhlanjeUthini? Hhe, awufun'ukuza ngala?Awu, klev'usuze kaBhambatha namhlanje! Zola, "Bhambatha" (from the Tsotsi sound track) It is hardly in our power to change the form of the state and…
Coetzee in/and Afrikaans
This article investigates Coetzee's complex attitudes towards the Afrikaans language, and, by extension, his views on language, translation, and the potential and performative subject positions, or “fictions of the”–enacted in and determined by a given language. It reflects on relevant passages from Coetzee's criticism (including “Achterberg's ‘Ballade van de Gasfitter’”, “Emerging from Censorship”, “What is a Classic?”, and “He and His Man”) and…
Fictions of the Global
If, as Benedict Anderson has argued, the realist novel has a particularly close relationship to the nation, what kind of narrative form would be best suited to transnational or even global fictions? This essay proposes a few answers to this question by looking first at what Roger Ebert has called “hyperlink cinema,” a form that emerging directors like Alexandro Gonzáles Iñárritu have used to connect narratives set in widely disparate locations (t…
Post-Apartheid Modernism and Consumer Culture
In this essay, I wish to extend the terrain of modernist studies and offer a new, perhaps troubling, way of viewing post-apartheid South African literature and culture. After some critical and theoretical ground clearing in the first two sections, I propose to read two contemporary novels in order to test my sense that their shared preoccupations are best grasped if we view them under the rubric of ‘post-apartheid modernism’. I bear in mind, neve…
Print, Text and Book Cultures in South Africa
Vir iemand wat altyd die gewig van 'n boek takseer terwyl jy begin blaai en nie die verleiding kan weerstaan om aan die binnekant te ruik nie, is Print, Text and Book Cultures in South Africa 'n heerlike boek. Nie dat dit spesifiek lekkerder as ander moderne boeke ruik nie - wel kraakhelder en fris - maar omdat die materialiteit, die boek as ding, so sterk op die voorgrond staan in die 21 artikels waaruit dit bestaan. Die plesier begin al danksy …
Ugly Feelings, Negative Dialectics
Beyond Rivalry
At the Cape Town Book Fair in 1987, during the height of the anti‐apartheid struggle, J. M. Coetzee made one of his most provocative speeches. It is one that is frequently cited by the proliferatin
On Public and Private in J. M. Coetzee
This essay reads J. M. Coetzee's Diary of a Bad Year in its historical context (the moment of the US war in Iraq, Abu Graib, Guantanamo and the apparent triumph of neoliberalism), while also probing the problems at stake in the practice of contextual reading and of taking the work as staging the opinions of the biographical Coetzee. The essay teases out not only the question of whether Coetzee should be seen as a public intellectual (the short bu…
The Cambridge Companion to Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela was one of the most revered figures of our time. He committed himself to a compelling political cause, suffered a long prison sentence, and led his violent and divided country to a peaceful democratic transition. His legacy, however, is not uncontested: his decision to embark on an armed struggle in the 1960s, his solitary talks with apartheid officials in the 1980s, and the economic policies adopted during his presidency still spa…
Tributes to Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)
A Tribute to Andrew Offenburger, Founding Editor of Safundi
The Keeper of Metamorphosis
History (25 works) · Art (20 works) · South African History and Culture (19 works) · Sociology (18 works) · History (13 works) · Literature (13 works) · Political science (10 works) · Aesthetics (9 works) · African studies and sociopolitical issues (9 works) · Law (9 works)